UPDATE on my life, if anybody cares. My ~boyfriend~ and I recently made a huge life changing decision to ~move in together~ … ok it’s not that life changing since I was already spending most weekends at his place anyway. But it’s a pretty big step to me.

Anywho… I know not everyone agrees with it… (Dad, I’m talking to you)

How could we do this?

Live together.

Unmarried.

Shacking up.

Living in sin, I know. But hear me out on this one… I can list a million different reasons we chose to live together… I’m not living out of a duffle bag on the weekends, we get to see each other everyday (hello, I kinda like the guy), but the main reason is so that this can be a trial run. A test period, so to speak…

Some old fashion peeps might think an engagement or marriage should come before or along with moving in together… I disagree.

What if we get married, and I find something that irks me… Like, oh, I don’t know, the beard trimmings he leaves in the sink… or the fact that he takes his socks off in the living room and leaves them there? (This is hypothetical, of course)

What if I discover that he is physically incapable of rinsing out the sink or picking up his socks? Or what if he simply refuses to do either of those things as an act of rebellion?

What if I find myself married to a sockless bearded monster who can’t stand the amount of clothes I have? Or the fact that I let clothes sit in the dryer and get all wrinkly again?

This is why I think moving in together is so beneficial. We can test the waters and ask ourselves, “How much do I really love this person? Is it worth picking up his socks? Is he willing to clean his own beard trimmings?”

This is all hypothetical, again.

Breaking up or moving out is one thing. Divorce is quite another. Not that I see either of these things happening in our future. So far, the beard trimmings and socks don’t bother me badly enough. But keep an eye out for more Chronicles of Cohabitation.

Ike Isedebe was at the movies with a group of his African American friends when one of them sneezed. Someone replied, “Oh, Ebola, get away from me,” said Isedebe, who is a member of the African Studies Organization and the chief of staff of UNT’s Student Government Association.

Esedebe has family from the United Kingdom as well as Nigeria, which is one of the top 10 countries represented at UNT. Only 7 percent of international students are from Africa. While the disease has become widespread in West Africa, the social stigma around the Ebola disease has become extreme at UNT and in the DFW area.

“It may have been a joke, but still, it’s a touchy subject,” Isedebe said. “Due to stereotypes and how society views things, people naturally associate [Ebola] with darker skinned people.”

“Nobody should assume that only dark skinned people have it,” Parent-Brito said. “That’s really racist.”

Parent-Brito is from Dallas County and has family in Irving.

“A lot of jokes come from serious situations, so people will joke about it because it’s been so talked-up, but they need to be careful with what they say,” Parent-Brito said.

The ongoing situation is comparable to the stereotype that people use when relating AIDS to gay people, or SARS to Asian people, according to Beverly Davenport, an anthropology professor at UNT.

“Diseases get stuck onto a given group or ethnicity. Even though the problem extends far beyond those groups, the stigmatic disease remains,” Davenport said.

The Electric Eagle, a university satire and humor publication, published an online article about a UNT fraternity student who had been diagnosed with the Ebola virus. According to Herschel Voorhees, the director of clinical studies at UNT, the Health and Wellness Center received numerous phone calls in relation to this article.

“There are a lot of people that are very concerned about this disease,” Voorhees said. “But hopefully they won’t sensationalize it too much…Students just need to be more aware of what’s going on in the world.”